


Lethe

by OMGitsgreen



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Gift Fic, Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Out of Order Narrative, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Canon, Protective Siblings, River Lethe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 02:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7080949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OMGitsgreen/pseuds/OMGitsgreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Who was he? Maybe he had never existed at all, maybe he existed where reality and dreams met, intersected, intertwined. Maybe he had never been anything more than a figment of someone else’s imagination, maybe he was a dream unanchored from its harbor. He was broken, he was gone, he was empty, he was—Who was he?"  Nico reflects upon his relationship with the river of oblivion, and how even its waters could not rob him of what was most important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lethe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MurkyMuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MurkyMuse/gifts).



> This one goes out to my girl and good friend, murkymuse. She wasn’t feeling great yesterday but was really trying her best to write the next chapter of her awesome PJO/HOO/ToA fanfiction Forget Me Not, and I’ve written this fic so that it’s compliant with hers as a way to give her encouragement. I hope this makes you feel better, Murky! I’ve never written anything for this fandom, but I’m always down for writing fics focusing on family. And I kinda feel like Nico and Bianca don’t get a lot of focus. So here you go! Also, side note, I wrote this in order of events and then switched everything so it’s out of order.

"Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls his watery labyrinth, which whoso drinks forgets both joy and grief."  
-John Milton, _Paradise Lost_

* * *

The room was beautiful, two queen-sized beds with silk sheets that were white. Blankets that were spun from wool and into colorful patterns of an island. The bedpost were topped with what looked to be gold, but couldn’t be. The rugs were lush and his foot nearly sunk into them, the hardwood floors were expensive as was the desk and the cabinets which were full of clothes that all fit him perfectly. A phone with buttons he had never seen could call up food from a menu that seemed to be three miles long with delicacies from every continent. The bathroom sparkled with granite, with a full sized bathtub that he could nearly swim in and a shower that spouted water in every direction that was perfectly warm and nearly sweet. Each counter top full of luxury soaps and shampoos which made his head spin. It was like heaven, and they hadn’t even left the room yet.

They had woken up there, both of them laying on their backs. There was a vague memory of being dropped off there by someone, but other than that there was nothing besides two bags and within one of them a booklet of passports. The girl was older than him, he was shorter than her. He stared at her and she stared at him. Did they know each other? She had asked him. Yes, he said and she knew it too. He was scared as the girl opened it up, and he sat beside her on the floor clenching his hands in order to keep from shaking. 

“Your name is Nico,” the girl told him, sounding unsure but trying to convince herself as she struggled with the letters on the paper that all seemed to mean nothing to him or her. “And I’m Bianca, uh, di Angelo. Bianca and Nico di Angelo.”

“Bianca di Angelo. Nico di Angelo,” he repeated dutifully, hoping that saying the names would make them mean something. It didn’t. 

“We’re brother and sister,” the girl, Bianca di Angelo, told him—Nico di Angelo.

“Brother…sister…” he muttered before pulling at a loose string on the rug. Somehow it corrected itself, and he knew that was weird but so was everything else. Trying to scrabble some sense together in his head, he frowned. “What does…what does that mean?”

“I…” the girl—Bianca di Angelo, her brow crinkled together and he—Nico di Angelo was soothed by it. It looked right that the girl made that expression when she was worried, it reminded him of nothing, the nonexistent memory escaped to the dark place in his head. She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I…I don’t know. I should know, shouldn’t I?”

“That means…we…we had the same mother and father…doesn’t it? That’s what being brother and sister is, right?” he offered cautiously and it felt good. It felt good to know something. The girl looked up at him, blinking.

“The same mother and father…” the girl repeated before grabbing his hand and tugging him over to the bathroom. There was a huge mirror, and in it he saw both of them standing side by side. Their dark hair, their dark eyes, she was lean and he had a layer of baby fat still clinging to him, but Nico found himself in her. He was there within her, and she was within him. She reached down to grasp his hand, her fingers were trembling but she held it tight. She laughed a laugh that almost sounded like a sob, and her expression twisted with sadness and relief. “We have the same nose.”

“We have the same chin,” he volunteered, she turned towards him and gave him a weak smile.

“You look like a pest,” she told him lovingly.

“You look like a know-it-all,” he told her back with the wobbly smile he tried to manage.

They both grinned in order to keep themselves from crying.

* * *

_In his dreams he was being held underwater. He screeched a name that he couldn’t remember that died on his lips as his hair was wetted in the river, the name that might have belonged to the girl who was laying on the shore of the dark beach but she did not move or respond to it. But there was no sun, it couldn’t be a beach, the place, he couldn’t remember the name of the place—where was he? He didn’t know how he knew her, the girl laying on the beach so still and quiet he didn’t know if he knew her, and the fact he didn’t know terrified him beyond anything. It made him fight harder, kicking the water into froth and scratching at the being that began to submerge him in the river that was cold and muddling everything up in his head. It shifted from woman to bird and he didn’t know how he knew that wasn’t normal but nothing was normal or fine. There was a pain inside of him, something hurt in his heart. He had lost something—someone, nothing, everything? He knew it and didn’t know it as he screamed and instead of air he sucked in the cold waters which clawed him to the marrow of his bones and the current reached its fingers inside of him and stole and stole and stole everything from him even as he fought and the thing he knew the unbreakable broken thing inside him became harder to grasp it kept trying to slip away. Who was he? Maybe he had never existed at all, maybe he existed where reality and dreams met, intersected, intertwined. Maybe he had never been anything more than a figment of someone else’s imagination, maybe he was a dream unanchored from its harbor. He was broken, he was gone, he was empty, he was—Who was he?_

* * *

Nico and Bianca regained each other and many other things together, piece by piece in the Lotus Hotel and Casino which both terrified and delighted Nico with the kaleidoscope colors and menagerie of amusements. Sitting upon the bed and blowing bubbles into fizzy soda a flavor of fruit Nico had never dreamed of, suddenly Bianca looked up and whispered, _Maria_. Their mother’s name was reclaimed like that. Stubbing his toe on a slot machine which spat out stuffed animals Nico unleashed a torrent of a language that made Bianca storm over and give him a good smack up the side of the head; _Italian_ , they were from Italy so of course they knew Italian. Bianca’s favorite color was green, Nico preferred sunsets to sunrises, they were from Venice, they had visited New York, and both of them loved popping pomegranates seeds between their teeth and making games of scaring each other by jumping out from behind curtains or under beds. 

A lawyer came for them and wrenched them out from the place where they had both finally been settling back into themselves. She had Bianca’s arm in a vice grip and Bianca was holding his hand. Nico hated the lawyer-lady immediately, not knowing why but feeling the rage burning through his brain and balancing on the edge of his teeth. He hated that arm that was grabbing Bianca so roughly, despised the way the lawyer-lady looked as she shoved them roughly into the car. He had no idea why, but he knew he hated the lawyer-lady for a good reason, and he held onto that nonexistent reason in a vice grip.

The windows fogged up as a sudden cold filled the car and the lawyer-lady gave Nico and Bianca a glare from the front seat before ordering the driver to drive. Her hair was pulled back so tightly that her eyes were bulging, huge, and terrifying, and Nico felt his cold anger falter and evaporate under it as he squirmed.

“Your parents are both dead, a car crash,” the lawyer said as if she were talking about the weather or reading off a grocery list. “However, you are in luck. Your father had a trust fund set up. You are going to be going to a prestigious academy.”

“Who is our father?” Bianca demanded, her jaw locked. Nico stared at her. Bianca only ever raised her voice at him when he was really being annoying—how he knew that he didn’t know. Hearing her angry at someone else was jarring. Was the lawyer-lady making her upset too?

“He is—was a very important man who will have you taken care of well,” the lawyer woman told her. “Now be quiet. It will be a long drive.” 

Nico and Bianca looked at each other, seeing each other in their faces, and Nico knew that she was thinking the same thing he was: they only had each other.

* * *

_“Bianca…do you ever worry that you are going to hell instead of heaven?” Nico had asked her. The memory was murky, perhaps they were sitting on a bed with the sunlight filtering through white curtain, or maybe they were pressed together by a fireplace on a cold rain day. His memories, those that still existed, were leached and wane like the crescent moon leaving only figments and vestige connections between. Something had washed him clean and almost empty, but he remembered the way Bianca’s brow had crinkled in concern._

_“Why do you say that?” Bianca had asked, her dark eyes warm with worry. Nico tossed something, a card? A pair of dice?_

_“I…I wished Mrs. Allegra’s dog would be quiet…and then it got run over,” Nico sniffed saying names that had no meaning as he curled his knees beneath his chin, “and Vincent told me people who don’t go to church are evil. And Mrs. Rossi made me sit in corner because she said I’m lazy.”_

_“Well, Vincent’s an idiot,” Bianca said flatly which was almost enough to make Nico laugh, “and Mrs. Rossi is horrible. We both have trouble reading, that’s not being lazy. And the dog getting run over has nothing to do with you.”_

_Nico tried to smile, tried to appear like his fears had been assuaged, but Bianca saw through him in a way that Nico recognized immediately. His fake smile immediately dropped as if it never existed at all._

_“I…I lied,” Nico admitted._

_“About what?” Bianca said gently._

_“Liking Sophia. All the boys were saying girl names, Bianca. And I—I don’t want to go to hell,” Nico managed, swallowing his tears and trying to keep himself from crying desperately. Bianca squeezed his hand hard, anchoring him in his panic. She was scared too, Nico understood. They both knew what this meant. Even as children, they understood the consequences of that broken thing inside of him in a world on the very cusp of chaos._

_“You can’t tell anyone, Nico,” Bianca told him seriously, looking around as if trying to assure herself that they were alone. “They’ll hurt you if they find out, they’ll take you away. But everything will be alright, Nico, everything will be fine.”_

_“How?” Nico begged her as he began sobbing outright._

_“Look at me—look at me!” Bianca demanded as she grabbed his face. “I don’t care about that, you are my brother. We just can never tell anyone, okay? Never, ever. You have to promise me, Nico. Promise me you’ll never tell anyone!”_

_“I—I promise,” Nico hiccuped, and Bianca brought him close into a hug that smelled like linen and baby powder. He clung to her. He was breathing again, in and out in a comforting pattern as his sister held him as tightly as he held her. “I love you, Bianca.”_

_“I love you too, Nico,” Bianca promised, her lips pressed into the top of his head like a kiss. “I love you, too.”_

Nico awoke roughly in the dark forest, his tears dried and crusted upon his cheek. He had regained another part of himself, and it was no blessing. He wondered if all the good things, and the sweet things, and the gentle things she had seen in him that no one else could had simply rotted away. Perhaps they only existed because of her in the first place, because nothing could ever be sustained by him. She was dead, because of Percy Jackson. But he needed to know why, he had to know why she had died.

And so he drifted into the underworld as one fell asleep, and finally found him on the dark shore looking into the Lord of the Dead’s eyes. Nico found the last part of himself in Hades, retracing the parts of Bianca in Hades’ face that he could retrieve. 

* * *

The Lethe River had taken everything from him once, Nico thought as he sheathed his sword. He stood in the shadow of his cabin, looking out into the winter sky. He wouldn’t let anyone suffer the same again. Blonde hair caught the light, and a smile like the sun for a moment distracting him. The cool hand of his half-sister’s in his own steadied him.

That was a promise he wouldn’t forget.


End file.
